The Scribble

When I wrote about one of my boys changing his mind about where he wants to go to college, I figured we’d get a lot of responses about the pivot. Because it’s basically like saying you’d like a bag of 12 oranges, telling everyone about your bag of oranges, and then walking up to the counter and ordering orange juice.

And we did, of course. Lots of warm congratulations and kind words.

But as the title suggests, the school change wasn’t what people focused on most. What I heard about, over and over, was that I crossed out the original school with a pen and wrote in the new one.

After months of working with a friend to get custom announcements just right, they finally arrived and sat in a neat stack on my dining room table. Five days later, we changed our minds and rendered one of the two (reminder — twins) featured declarations obsolete.

For the next two weeks, I walked by the stack of announcements that needed to go out but needed to be fixed. I thought off and on about font size, sticker sources, matching the color of the paper, and so on.

And then, at some point between all the things I have going on and questioning all my life choices, I just thought:

I cannot care about this one more second.

I’ve got new school deposits to pay and $1 million in stamps to buy and logistics to plan for all three of my children and on and on….and these are going to people who love my kids and it’s just not that serious.

I practiced The Scribble on one of the thick, off-white cardstock announcements. Straight across? Curly? I landed on a wave.

And then some of the announcements went in the mail, and the responses started coming in, and they weren’t about the college switch at all.

“I love that you just scratched it out instead of ordering new announcements. Makes us all feel human during this time of year when we’re frazzled and want everything perfect.”

“Honestly, I kind of loved that you just scratched it out. It felt real.”

“The hard scratched change of school, such a perfect metaphor for life. About face and keep charging.”

I could turn this into a whole reflection about life not going according to plan, about pivots and perspective and letting go.

But I am pretty sure you get it.

So here’s what I’ll say instead.

The whole point was never the announcement.

It was that you loved our kids.

And we love you.

The scribble just made it honest.

We’re human. You’re human. None of this is as polished as we think it’s supposed to be.

We’re all out here doing our best with a pen, a wave, and a whole lot of love.

Scratch it all out. Keep trying. Keep going. Keep charging forward. Scribble away.